The event mirrored the television show Chopped on the Food Network, a contest in which contestants must incorporate discordant ingredients into dishes on tight time constraints. The format of the FYI event included a 20-minute time limit but a decidedly casual approach to which ingredients were required in students’ dishes.

Victor Butoi ’22 proved his name with a first place prize for his piece titled “Under the Sea,” featuring a choco-pie crab, a hand roll hermit crab, a deli ham sea star and a cookie crumble sea floor.

“The judges were impressed by his command of the canvas (plate), and felt he earned his place as champion for the complexity and artistry of the scene that he depicted,” Yamazaki told The Sun in an email.

Honorable mentions included Priyanka Dilip ’22 for her “socially conscious” piece, “Elon Musk Rocket,” and Samantha Chu ’22 for her “Millennial Snowman,” complete with a Canada Goose cape and avocado toast. Unfortunately, the sushi sculpture met an untimely demise shortly after the judging, tumbling to the floor in a flurry of rice.

The culinary aspect of the event, however, was secondary to the overall mission of bringing Asian American students together to celebrate culture and teaching students how to plan and execute an event from start to finish.

Asian Chopped, one of FYI’s three projects this semester, was spearheaded by organizers Tamara Sato ’22, Liying Wang ’22 and Crystal Tang ’22. Other FYI teams include a bubble tea fundraiser that took place last week and a photography project currently in the works.

Sato said the event went “much better than planned.” Wang added that “we weren’t expecting such innovative designs.”

The mission statement of FYI, is to “create future leaders in the Cornell community by instilling passion and drive, encouraging skills development, and sparking intellectual growth through the lens of the Asian and Asian American experience,” according to their website.

On Thursday, I read the article in the Daily Sun’s Guest Room section entitled “Cornellians Must Combat Anti-Semitism,” in which the author, Josh Eibelman ’20, underlined the need to fight anti-Semitism on campus. Though Eibelman is absolutely correct in that anti-Semitism remains an enormous problem both on campus and in America as a whole, he spends most of his piece not denouncing actual anti-Semitism, but instead attacking Cornell Students for Justice in Palestine. As an Ashkenazi Jew and a committed member of Cornell SJP, I thought it necessary to respond to Eibelman’s accusations from a Jewish, anti-Zionist perspective.

Eibelman claims that SJP’s activity qualifies as antisemitic because it works to “delegitimize Israel — the only Jewish state in the world — as a ‘settler colonial’ and ‘apartheid’ state.” According to Eibelman, this stance is incontrovertibly antisemitic since “the State Department classifies ‘denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor’” as a form of anti-Semitism. I would hope that Eibelman realizes that the State Department of the United States of America, which has supported ethnic cleansing around the world and is by far the greatest backer of the State of Israel abroad, is not the final arbiter on what is and isn’t anti-Semitism. I would also hope that Eibelman has enough knowledge of Jewish history to recognize that the Israeli project itself has historically been at odds with Jewish self-determination: it was the early Zionists, not the Palestinians, who coerced Holocaust survivors into enlisting in the Israeli Defense Forces and who banned the use of Yiddish as the living language of the Ashkenazi people in their “Jewish state.”

Eibelman is correct that “Cornell SJP effectively endorses the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state,” to the same extent that we oppose the existence of any state predicated on the primacy of white people, Jewish or otherwise, over everyone else. This stance should not be controversial. Most Americans rightly denounce Richard Spencer’s calls for the creation of a hypothetical white ethnostate in America through “peaceful ethnic cleansing,” so why do a few certain so-called “progressives” seem to have such difficulty denouncing an actually existing white ethnostate, established by the wholesale slaughter of Palestinian Arabs and the forced sterilization of African Jews by European Jewish colonists? There’s no two ways about it: Zionism is a particularly horrific formulation of white supremacy.

Any accusation that Cornell Students for Justice in Palestine is somehow a bastion of “anti-Semitism masked as anti-Zionism,” or that anti-Zionism itself is inherently antisemitic, is completely baseless. We stand against oppression in all its forms, including anti-Semitism. I speak from personal experience when I say that being a Jew and being a member of Cornell SJP is not at all contradictory, nor is being a Jew and being opposed to the existence of a Jewish state on principle.

But Eibelman, in seeking to push his agenda in the face of tragedy, seems to ignore these inconvenient truths. Instead of directly condemning the American Neo-Nazi movement and beginning a productive discussion on how to prevent another Pittsburgh massacre, Eibelman tries to shift the blame onto a group consisting almost entirely of people of color, who are bigger potential targets of fascist violence than almost anyone else. In frantically pointing out instances of “anti-Semitism” which are actually just figments of his own imagination, Eibelman helps nobody but Neo-Nazis and their ilk. Ultimately, the more confusion people like Eibelman create with their unfounded accusations of anti-Semitism against progressive organizations, the more time fascism in America is allowed to fester.

Max Greenberg ’22

]]>https://cornellsun.com/2018/11/11/letter-to-the-editor-re-guest-room-cornellians-must-combat-anti-semitism/feed/0GUEST ROOM | Cornellians Must Combat Anti-Semitismhttps://cornellsun.com/2018/11/08/guest-room-cornellians-must-combat-anti-semitism/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
https://cornellsun.com/2018/11/08/guest-room-cornellians-must-combat-anti-semitism/#respondFri, 09 Nov 2018 00:46:00 +0000https://cornellsun.com/?p=4112517On Saturday, Oct. 27, an anti-Semite committed the worst anti-Semitic act in America’s history. We have an obligation to mourn the eleven Jews slaughtered in Pittsburgh at the Tree of Life synagogue. We also have a collective responsibility to act against anti-Semitism. I propose starting right here, on our campus.

The shooter in Pittsburgh is a far-right, white nationalist, and anti-Semitic bigot. He represents a classical, blatant sort of Jew-hatred, which certainly exists at Cornell, despite the large Jewish population here. My sophomore year, I discovered that my next-door neighbor told his (non-Jewish) roommate that Jews are morally corrupt and that Hitler did not finish the job. The roommate was rightly disgusted and moved out, the incident was reported to the residence hall director, but this individual faced no real consequences for his despicable anti-Semitic statements.

But more prevalent on our campus is an anti-Semitism masked as anti-Zionism. Students for Justice in Palestine, which has a Cornell chapter, exemplifies this sort of anti-Semitism. To its credit, Cornell SJP posted on Facebook about the need to combat “anti-Jewish hate” after the Pittsburgh shooting. Ironically, Cornell SJP engages, to some degree, in a form of anti-Semitism itself. On its Facebook page, the group delegitimizes Israel — the only Jewish state in the world — as a “settler colonial” and “apartheid” state, and calls for resistance against the “fascist grip of US and Zionist state violence.”

Cornell SJP will argue that they are defending Palestinian human rights and are not anti-Semitic. The U.S State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism refutes this argument. The State Department classifies “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” as acts of anti-Semitism. When it calls to “make Israel Palestine again” and to “Free Palestine” (both found on Cornell SJP’s Facebook page), Cornell SJP effectively endorses the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state and a haven for the Jewish people.

My fellow Cornellians: we must combat anti-Semitism wherever its origins and whatever form it takes. If you are dismayed at the brutal shooting of eleven Jews in Pittsburgh, know that anti-Semitism exists on our campus too. And we are all duty-bound to fight it.

Josh Eibelman is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. Guest Room runs periodically this semester. Comments may be sent to opinion@cornellsun.com.

]]>https://cornellsun.com/2018/11/08/guest-room-cornellians-must-combat-anti-semitism/feed/0RUSSELL | An Improvement Opportunity that Could Really Move the Needle!https://cornellsun.com/2018/11/08/russell-an-improvement-opportunity-that-could-really-move-the-needle/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
https://cornellsun.com/2018/11/08/russell-an-improvement-opportunity-that-could-really-move-the-needle/#respondFri, 09 Nov 2018 00:44:23 +0000https://cornellsun.com/?p=4112292Perhaps no motif is more ingrained in our psyche than that of the mentor or father figure offering up powerful life lessons in low-voiced, soothing maxims. As the undisputed “next generation,” we’ve come to expect these teaching moments in not just our films or television shows, but also in most of our interactions with people over 40. It’s hard to go a week without the typical “As you move into the real world, remember…” or “There’s an old saying in Tennessee…”

For me, many of these conversations center around the idea that we have the opportunity to undo or at least avoid the mistakes of our parents — to get the best out of the world we’re inheriting as we shape it into something more fair and welcoming for all. There’s one aspect of this “real world” before us, however, that many in the baby boomer generation still don’t recognize as a problem for their successors to address. The area, in my view, is a source of untold anguish and ruin – a dark spot we must bleach before it further stains American society. To me, there’s no question: we must let die the mass abuse of those stupid cliché business terms.

If you’re not familiar, some examples of these banal utterances include saying “improvement opportunities” instead of “problems,” or, yes, even calling managers “people leaders” and the H.R. department “people operations” (et tu Google). It isn’t just euphemisms, however. There’s a slew of trite idioms you’ll hear on repeat at any office space: “boots on the ground,” “moving the needle,” “open door policy,” “let’s take this off-line,” and many more.

I’m convinced that a sizable portion of the people you’ll meet who tell you they “work in business” really just do busy work and recite these buzzwords to their “team members” (not co-workers) at the office.

Phrases like these are verbal stock photos — overtly staged and woefully conventional. They’ve created a world where workers can’t tell if they’re being fired and no one really knows each other on any distinguishable level, behind the masks of veiled rhetoric. If we’re all saying the same thing in the same way based on the same pseudo-scientific studies advocating for ambiguous language, we’re only dehumanizing corporate culture. Why fight automation’s potential to replace employees, when employees themselves are becoming robots by way of their words?

Today, the same parents complaining that their children get participation trophies are espousing the semantic equivalent when they give every person and every situation the same canned clichés. Business is about the rush of both the triumphs and the failures, not making failures sound like triumphs with dull language.

The truth is, though, that there’s little hope for change.

The other day, I watched a nine-year-old yell “YOLO” before he rolled down a hill with his friends. He was two years old when Drake’s “The Motto” came out, so I doubt the reference was an homage to the 6 God. For almost a decade, this has been just a part of how you talk in elementary school. You pick up the terms once you arrive, and no matter where you came from, it’s hard to resist their allure. When everyone else says “YOLO,” 8 times a day, it feels like adopting the vernacular is the way to gain membership into fourth grade culture.

It’s the same in the corporate world. As I look back at my internship experience, I can chart a distinct path of language shifts. Each Fall I return to campus with a few more idiotic idioms in my toolkit. I don’t want to talk like a character in Office Space, but I can’t help it. I want to sound smart, so instead of actually making intelligent comments I resort to the next easiest alternative: using the same terms the smart people use. It’s all about being accepted, and despite this article, I’m unlikely to change.

Whether or not our generation can do away with “people leaders” for good, our converging vernaculars are proof of a truth we’ll likely all come to terms with as we move into our careers: in more ways than we’d like to admit, we really aren’t all that unique. No wonder our chance of a mid-life crisis is as sure as death and taxes. Becoming “part of the crowd” is the default, even for high achieving Ivy League students. Overused business terminology is just a symptom.

But there’s certainly hope for us. Maybe there’s something to be said for trying not to fit in, even in the corporate cultures we strive so earnestly to blend into. Standing out surely won’t always get you promoted, but at least it’ll help us keep our sanity. So I say it’s worth it.

Paul Russell is a senior in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Russelling Features runs every other Friday this semester. He can be reached at prussell@cornellsun.com.

]]>https://cornellsun.com/2018/11/08/russell-an-improvement-opportunity-that-could-really-move-the-needle/feed/0LEUNG | On Carrying Painhttps://cornellsun.com/2018/11/08/leung-on-carrying-pain/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
https://cornellsun.com/2018/11/08/leung-on-carrying-pain/#respondFri, 09 Nov 2018 00:41:24 +0000https://cornellsun.com/?p=4112273Sometimes I’m scared to write certain pieces, because if I do, I’ll fall into some downward spiral after shifting through my memories, and this article isn’t supposed to be my attempt to pull myself from some depth, but one that hopes to understand? Find hope? I don’t really know yet.

I’ve been thinking about pain a lot. About how every individual carries their own burden and as much as we try to relieve the pain of others, there’s not always a way to. We can listen, support, love. But a lot of times, that doesn’t feel like enough.

I remember walking through the streets of a foreign city with a person I had met a few days earlier. He told me his friend had just died, and here he was in a place he didn’t want to be in anymore and I didn’t know what to do. I said sorry; I knew that wasn’t enough.

I was sitting in a bar, listening to live music. One of my friends walked off. When I followed him, he told me his mom was ill and there was a high chance she wouldn’t survive. I sat next to him, and wanted to tell him it would be okay. But it wasn’t; his sadness and pain and anger was justified.

I feel like I don’t even have to state it, but there is importance in it: pain cannot be compared. There is no way the suffering one feels can be measured up against someone else’s.

I took a six week course in Rome and in the end, I was supposed to read something I had written for the class; a creative piece, or a poem, something my teacher had already read and edited. I think I read a villanelle I had workshopped in class. But I also read another piece that my closest friends on the program probably didn’t know, or expect, to be read. I ended with a paragraph about how I wish there was some way I could shoulder everyone’s pain so I wouldn’t have to see everyone pretending to be so strong all the time. I wrote that I wanted to bottle all of our memories — the sweetness of sunsets and gelato, late nights and cheap wine — but I wanted a way I could take a little bit of their burden and make it my own.

Then I think of my own pain. When I have sought answers and realized I have none. When the inevitability of events seems overwhelming. And while my presence on the other end seems pointless at times (a shoulder, an ear, a hug, a voice), when someone can give me that, it makes me realize that their openness to care means I am not alone.

Milan Kundera, in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, writes that the type of compassion that allows you to not only live with other people’s misfortune, but also feel with them any emotion — joy, anxiety, happiness, pain — signifies the maximal capacity of affective imagination: the art of emotional telepathy. It is the highest level of the hierarchy of sentiments. When I read that, I felt some sort of relief; it made me feel better at how upset I get about other people’s problems and always try to find ways in which I can relieve them.

I’m a crier — any world event that I don’t agree with and know will affect many people’s lives will start the tears; any personal problem on the smallest scale will also do the same. Maybe people will dub me a snowflake. Others, weak. But I do believe there’s a certain strength that comes from empathizing so greatly with others that pain alone cannot be isolated. I think it allows action to take place, because even though something might not affect you directly, the fear of its repercussions on others is enough to move you.

This morning, I woke to news of another shooting that occurred at a bar in Thousand Oaks, California, leaving 12 dead. It was a college night at the bar, bringing in dozens of students to one of Ventura County’s largest country dance halls and live music venues. I am hurting for the people whose family members and friends were in that bar; for the moment when they heard about the shooting and knew that someone they knew or loved was in there and not responding. This strengthens my belief that there is a need for stricter gun control — of continuing to elect officials who stand with this, to support organizations that work towards this goal — but right now, I just feel the pain.

I wish I could channel this emotion into something meaningful. Maybe writing allows people to find solace in something and begin to heal. So, for now, this is to everyone who is hurting.

Gabrielle Leung is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at gleung@cornellsun.com. Serendipitous Musings appears alternate Thursdays this semester.

]]>https://cornellsun.com/2018/11/08/leung-on-carrying-pain/feed/0CHANG | Platform Complacency Will Prove Fatal For Democrats In 2020https://cornellsun.com/2018/11/07/chang-platform-complacency-will-prove-fatal-for-democrats-in-2020/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
https://cornellsun.com/2018/11/07/chang-platform-complacency-will-prove-fatal-for-democrats-in-2020/#respondWed, 07 Nov 2018 07:15:11 +0000https://cornellsun.com/?p=4102079The 2018 Midterm was serious business. Cornell has been a roaring fire of political intensity for the last two weeks. Opinion columnists (I’m sure you can guess the specific ones) have been yelling all night. More of my friends voted than I thought possible, although some Cornellians — either disillusioned with the political process (fine, but a weak excuse) or simply disinterested (c’mon) — never filled out a ballot. Although we probably won’t get a true break from electioneering until after the 2020 race, I’ll be content with clearing my inbox of daily asks for campaign donations and “shockingly new analysis” from pollsters and Nate Silver himself.

Let’s be clear: Democrats did what they needed to do to win back the house. Early in the night, the results weren’t looking so good for our left-leaning friends: at one point, 538 projected only a 5 in 9 chance of a Democratic takeover in the house (the final pre-election forecast was 6 in 7 for a blue House).

But the professionals prevailed. According to early exit polls (certainly not infallible, but telling nonetheless), two-thirds of voters centered their ballot on President Trump. More voters showed up to oppose rather than support the President. Independents, never-Trumper Republicans and moderates turned out for candidates who promised to effectively constrain the president, as predicted. In line with most projections, Obama-Trump and Romney-Clinton districts turned blue again. And while polling errors in specific districts unsurprisingly occurred (for example Democrat Max Rose winning an election rated R+7.5 by 538 in N.Y.-11), pollsters predicted national trends well within the margin of error.

Of course, it isn’t like the Democrats did everything right. And the Senate? Democrats shouldn’t be excited. There was no wave, and the GOP-dominated Senate will prove to be a thorn for leftists who aren’t willing to compromise. Seriously restricting the president on foreign policy or stopping Trump’s nominees will be next to impossible. I seriously doubt any mind-blowingly partisan legislation will be passed.

Mike Braun’s victory over Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) was called by ABC before 9 p.m., a symptom of Democratic difficulties in deep-red Trump country. Campaign arms of both parties sank money into this race, with President Trump visiting twice in the last four days, former President Barack Obama visiting once and other notables like Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) showing up to stump for the moderate Democrat. But it wasn’t even close. In this case, Donnelly’s framing of Braun as a Trump rubber stamp backfired, indicating Trump’s incredible staying power even amid tariffs that have decked Indiana’s soybean farmers.

Overall, though, it seems that there are critical shifts helping the Democrats. It’s a little early to be hopeful for 2020, but Dems correctly identified and capitalized around staying issues like healthcare and opposing Trump while Republicans generally faltered. Issues where Republicans are traditionally strong are becoming less important — only 2 of 10 respondents in exit polls chose immigration or the economy as their most important issue. Many of the GOP’s “October surprise” pivots backfired, including the White House’s attempt to fire up the base on immigration by emphasizing the caravan and an executive order to ban birthright citizenship.

Where does this leave the Democrats? More minorities are making it into office, with Jared Polis set to become Colorado’s first openly gay governor, Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) the first Muslim women in Congress and Ayanna Pressley the first black women elected by Massachusetts for Congress. State legislatures that are flipping blue will gerrymander House districts after the 2020 census. Early voting patterns indicated high enthusiasm, especially among young and first-time voters.

All in all, Democrats could capitalize on a whole host of factors in the 2020 elections and wrestle back control of the political narrative. But they must tread carefully, because even one misstep could ensure that President Trump wins again, in line with a historical narrative that heavily favors incumbent presidents. I’m not willing to take a stab at the nominee or even a list of Democratic nominees — in fact, I think the national brand for the Democrats should be decided far before any conversation about 2020.

This midterm indicated that we haven’t seen a fundamental shift in how American politics operates. The two-party system is still important, polling is still accurate enough and vote-switching still occurs. Sticking to the narrative of opposing Trump and moderate-ish policies should work well enough in the short-term. Courting the Obama-Trump and Romney-Clinton voters and characterizing a second Trump term as terrifying will probably motivate just enough voters to prevent eight straight years of mercurial policy making and Twitter rants.

But these are stopgap solutions. Media spin and association with the national branch of the Democrats have invariably hurt blue candidates, because the hate for Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer permeates a large portion of the country. Beto O’Rourke and Bill Nelson’s losses in their respective Senate races in Texas and Florida demonstrate the strength of GOP bastions across the United States. Only increasing Democratic enthusiasm can outweigh the very red Senate and historical trends that favor the Republicans.

A long-term strategy must be focused on expanding the electorate to more unreached and previously disinterested voters in addition to finding new left of center issues to consistently excite voters. Assembling the pieces of a scattered blue puzzle will require serious thought if the Democrats are committed to a true blue wave and a replacement for Trump in 2020.

Darren Chang is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. Swamp Snorkeling runs every other Monday this semester. He can be reached at dchang@cornellsun.com.

]]>https://cornellsun.com/2018/11/07/chang-platform-complacency-will-prove-fatal-for-democrats-in-2020/feed/0WU | How the Next ‘Extreme Ithaca Liberal’ Can Beat Tom Reedhttps://cornellsun.com/2018/11/07/wu-how-the-next-extreme-ithaca-liberal-can-beat-tom-reed/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
https://cornellsun.com/2018/11/07/wu-how-the-next-extreme-ithaca-liberal-can-beat-tom-reed/#respondWed, 07 Nov 2018 07:13:35 +0000https://cornellsun.com/?p=4102077Some cities are notable for towering skyscrapers, others for offbeat museums or bucolic beauty. But to Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), who represents New York’s 23rd congressional district (including Cornell), Ithaca represents little more than a bastion of lefty extremism. And likewise, Tracy Mitrano, who lost to Reed in yesterday’s midterm election, is little more than an Ithaca outgrowth.

In expressing this view, Reed does not pull punches. Look no further than his own campaign ads. “Extreme Ithaca Liberal Tracy Mitrano is lying to conceal her positions,” fumed a recent one. Broadcast in the final days of the midterm, this was the essence of Reed’s argument to voters: Mitrano, like all Ithaca liberals, is just far too extreme.

Mitrano’s decisive defeat shows this reactive argument still holds sway with N.Y.-23 voters. It has in the past, too. The “Extreme Ithaca Liberal” trope was pioneered in 2014 against Democrat Martha Robertson, and then again against Democrat John Plumb in 2016. And like Mitrano, Reed dispatched with both Democrats with relative ease.

Still, Reed’s repeated success suggests the need for a new Democratic approach in this conservative-leaning district. Any aspiring Democrat hoping to unseat Reed must tack to the center. They must eschew left-wing policies like Medicare for All. They must be moderate on pocketbook issues, such as fracking. And above all, they must learn to evade on abortion.

Start with Mitrano’s biggest mistake. To survive a cut-throat Democratic primary, Mitrano took up the banner of Medicare for All, a poorly defined slogan for single-payer health care trumpeted by Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

This was a mistake. It handed Reed a potent cudgel against Mitrano. In each of their three debates, as well as in his ads, Reed hammered Mitrano on health care: “When my opponent wants to embrace government-run health care that is going to cost $32 trillion, that’s going to double your taxes.”

He has a point. Medicare for All amounts to nationalizing the health insurance system, which would necessarily require a stiff tax hike. Set aside whether that is worthwhile (in my view, it is not). Running on higher taxes is politically noxious. Conservative voters and right-leaning independents — whom any N.Y.-23 candidate must sway to win — tend to believe that taxes are confiscatory. Prospective Democratic candidates would do well to take notice of that.

Mitrano erred in her opposition to hydraulic fracturing — in particular, her support of a New York moratorium on fracking. Fracking has its hazards, and should be regulated as such. But New York’s bountiful reserves of untapped shale energy hold real economic promise for the state.

Reinstating fracking would lower energy costs for New Yorkers, which would largely benefit the poor and middle class. And that is what makes Mitrano’s anti-fracking stance difficult to justify to voters. In political terms, foggy environmental risks do not entice voters like fatter wallets do. A savvier approach would be to oppose the fracking ban while acknowledging the need for prudent environmental safeguards.

Lastly, Mitrano missed on abortion. Though polling is sparse, the partisan tilt of the district suggests most of its voters oppose abortion in some form. And if the midterm is any indication, her wishy-washy views — against restricting it, but “not a super-enthusiast about” it — were not received well by N.Y.-23 voters.

To perform better, Democrats running in conservative districts should become more comfortable fudging the issue. That’s exactly what Conor Lamb (D-Penn.) did in his special election victory earlier this year. Lamb positioned himself as an ardent Catholic who personally opposed abortion, but did not favor additional abortion curbs. This lets Democratic candidates parry attacks that they want on-demand abortion. But it is also a position hospitable to pro-choice and women’s groups, on whom Democrats rely for funding

Yet for all Mitrano’s slip-ups, she also offers lessons for budding Democratic contenders. Her substantive stances on cybersecurity — about which she is a genuine expert — were both refreshing and compelling. Her emphasis on infrastructure, support for rural broadband expansion, and robust backing of the Second Amendment are all political winners. Near the end of the campaign, she made the politically keen decision to hit Reed on his faux bipartisanship. These approaches bolstered Mitrano’s self-avowed centrism. They are worth emulating again.

It is a shame Reed held the seat. The country and the district would have been better off with Mitrano. As I wrote in August, Reed’s deeply misguided support for tariffs and false concern for the national debt deserves to be repudiated. Mitrano was not able to pull it off. But maybe another candidate, one who learns the lessons of Mitrano’s defeat, can.

Ethan Wu is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. Discourse and Discord runs every other Tuesday this semester. He can be reached at ewu@cornellsun.com.

]]>https://cornellsun.com/2018/11/07/wu-how-the-next-extreme-ithaca-liberal-can-beat-tom-reed/feed/0JOHNS | In House Victory, Democrats Now Owe Us Policy Details and Consensus-Buildinghttps://cornellsun.com/2018/11/07/johns-in-house-victory-democrats-now-owe-us-policy-details-and-consensus-building/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
https://cornellsun.com/2018/11/07/johns-in-house-victory-democrats-now-owe-us-policy-details-and-consensus-building/#respondWed, 07 Nov 2018 07:10:41 +0000https://cornellsun.com/?p=4102075As Democrats celebrate taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in a decade, they soon will confront a lesser understood political reality: Campaigning is much easier than governing. Having wrongly convinced some Americans that implementing a single payer healthcare system that has worked nowhere in the world and rolling back tax cuts that have sparked an economic renaissance will benefit them, they are now on the hook to work within a divided federal government to forge consensus and deliver results — or face almost certain political decimation by President Trump in 2020.

There was no “blue wave” last evening. There was, instead, a message to the Trump administration that there remain many Americans still hurting in this nation even though every economic metric is pointing upward, including gross domestic product, employment, job creation and finally positive news in the third quarter this year that wages are inching upwards. The damage done to America’s poor and middle class by Obama administration policies cannot be underestimated. It was hugely ambitious and perhaps overly optimistic to believe that all Americans’ pain from the Obama era could be lifted in a mere two years, especially amidst such a partisan mainstream media culture that has joined Democrats in advocating for their policy agenda.

Democrats, to their credit, realized this incomplete economic recovery though they offered nearly no effective or detailed policy options to help those Americans that have yet to benefit from it. For example, they spoke extensively about a “Medicare for All” healthcare solution, which almost certainly will prove disastrous. This plan, of course, has not been submitted to Congress. Perhaps for this reason alone, there is no so-called “Medicare for All” policy – nor has it been scored by the Congressional Budget Office. Due to the fiscal realities, similar plans have failed even in states like California, a wealthy state with a liberal supermajority. They spoke also about repealing President Trump’s hugely successful tax cuts, which combined with vast regulatory relief have delivered growth unmatched in any period of the Obama administration. The Democrats will now have to explain in greater detail than just bumper stickers how taking more money from working Americans for Washington spending will prove helpful for anyone. Instead, incoming House Ways and Means chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) said his number one priority was demanding President Trump’s tax returns — not delivering a better life for the American people.

The campaign also speaks to the political relevance of the previous two presidents, both of whom involved themselves heavily in the 2018 elections. President Trump’s rallies energized voters and increased turnout in key races from Texas to Indiana. On the other hand, President Obama’s efforts to influence races especially in Georgia and Florida turned to be for naught, as Georgia Republican Brian Kemp and Florida Republicans Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott emerged victorious from close races with national attention. This, if nothing else, signals the end of Obama’s political clout and the continued strength of Trump’s political leadership within his party. Last night, voters rejected Obama’s message and his endorsed candidates — a legacy of the over 1,000 state and federal seats Obama lost while he was President of the United States. Floridians voted instead for Mr. DeSantis, who could not have tied himself closer to President Trump.

Ultimately, this election will not amount to much in terms of policy change. The Democrats, no doubt, will use their House control to wield the committee gavels and the docket against the President’s agenda, despite their empty rhetoric about delivering policy solutions. This will be politically damaging and will captivate the mainstream media circus — but it will not impact the President’s ability to conduct business, and the Republican Senate will continue to confirm his judicial and executive appointees and, if necessary, his presidency in the face of impeachment. Importantly, Democrats’ indefensible handling of Kavanaugh and lack of any plan to secure the border likely cost them the opportunity to gain control of the Senate as well, costing especially in states like Florida and Missouri, both previously Democratic seats which swung to Republicans.

Democrats certainly benefited last evening from a hugely agenda-driven and biased mainstream media, which disseminated myriad lies and misrepresentations about Trump’s unqualified policy successes these past two years. Republican voters, no doubt, responded just as angrily to the media pounding into the minds of low information voters daily that somehow Trump was not legitimately elected, and the polls seem to reflect a response to Trump as an individual — not an executive — though he was not on the ballot this year.

This is the choice soon facing Americans in 2020: one party believes in lower taxes; the other believes in higher taxes. One party believes in securing our borders; the other has no plan or interest in doing so. One party has a healthy skepticism of the federal government’s ability to competently manage healthcare and questions the Constitutional basis for even authorizing such empowerment; the other cannot hand the entire healthcare sector — nearly a fifth of our gross domestic product — to the swamp fast enough.

President Trump proved in two years that his agenda is working. He has proven himself a competent politician and leader, though he is admittedly an unusual one. The unanswered question is whether Democrats, now given the majority in the House of Representatives, have any constructive policy that they can implement that they can point to when they again seek election in 2020.

Michael Johns, Jr. is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. Athwart History runs every other Wednesday this semester. He can be reached at mjohns@cornellsun.com.

]]>https://cornellsun.com/2018/11/07/johns-in-house-victory-democrats-now-owe-us-policy-details-and-consensus-building/feed/0VALDETARO | A Democracy, If We Can Keep Ithttps://cornellsun.com/2018/11/07/valdetaro-a-democracy-if-we-can-keep-it/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
https://cornellsun.com/2018/11/07/valdetaro-a-democracy-if-we-can-keep-it/#respondWed, 07 Nov 2018 07:07:52 +0000https://cornellsun.com/?p=4102021At the point of writing, the next holders of many of the 470 federal offices on the ballot this year have been decided. Beginning with Kentucky at 6 p.m., polls have closed across the country, with Democrats taking the House and Republicans consolidating their control of the Senate.

Perhaps even more important than these federal elections, though, are state elections, which will have more numerous and longer-lasting implications. In the midst of our current political divisions, state governments not only provide a place for opponents of federal policies to try out their own policies, but state attorneys general have increasingly used their offices to launch legal challenges against the actions and policies of presidential administrations. It is not just in their role as laboratories of democracy, though, that the results of state elections will play an important role in future elections. On this night, state-level elections have delivered an ambiguous and unclear verdict on who gets to vote and who people get to vote for.

Beyond the states’ roles as bastions of federalism, they also have the crucial role of administering elections. In this role, states also set criteria for who is eligible to vote, an ability that was used for nearly a century to disenfranchise African-American voters in the South — until the Voting Rights Act of 1964. This legislation prevented states that had previously restricted access to the voting booth from enacting any new measures without prior approval from the federal government. However, in 2013 the Supreme Court struck down key provisions of this landmark legislation, leading to the politicization and increasing racialization of access to the ballot box in the ensuing years. Tonight, this issue was on the ballot in the form of both ballot initiatives and candidates with clear stances on the voting rights.

Many ballot initiatives were attempts to increase people’s abilities to vote. One of these was in Florida, where Amendment 4 was a proposed constitutional amendment to automatically restore the right to vote to formerly incarcerated felons (except those convicted of murder or sexual assault). Currently, they have to go through a decades-long process that prevents over 10 percent of Florida’s voting age population from voting, a group of people that was disproportionately African-American. Requiring over 60 percent of the vote to pass, Amendment 4 currently has been projected to exceed that threshold. As a result, an additional 1.4 million Floridians will be eligible to vote in the next election. In contrast, an Arkansas ballot measure requiring a photo I.D. to vote has nearly 80 percent of the vote. That means a state which was once part of the Confederacy is set to enact a policy that disproportionately curtails the ability of minorities to vote.

Candidates with explicit stances on voting rights had similarly mixed results. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, once the Vice Chair of President Trump’s President Commission on Election Integrity, lost to Democrat Laura Kelly in his bid to become Governor of Kansas. Even before his appointment to the President’s frivolous commission, Kobach was the premier propagator of the myth that voter fraud is a widespread issue. On the other hand, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp looks to be on his way to being elected, despite numerous controversies, including a strict-match system that he championed leading to hundreds of thousands of people having their voter registrations stuck in limbo. These indeterminate registrations were often due to a simple misspelling or omission of a hyphen in a name, an issue that disproportionately affected Democrat-friendly African-Americans in the state. On a similar note, New Hampshire Governor John Kelly, who recently passed a law making it harder for out-of-state students to vote, was re-elected in spite of this action drawing much controversy.

In addition to who could vote, who the electorate gets to vote for was also on the ballot. In multiple states, there were electoral reform packages on the ballot in the form of ballot initiatives. This is especially relevant given the upcoming 2020 census, with redistricting being taken up by the states so that new districts can be in place for the 2022 election. In Michigan, a state that was gerrymandered by Republicans in the 2010 elections, the voters overwhelmingly approved an initiative to create an independent redistricting commission. Colorado passed not only a measure that would similarly hand congressional redistricting duties to an independent commission, but also one that gave the task of redistricting state legislative districts to a non-partisan independent commission.

The fact that redistricting is impending also underscored the importance of governor’s races, which were already important for their aforementioned consequences for voting rights. Of the states electing governors tonight, 26 allow their governor to veto congressional maps drawn by state legislatures and 23 allow them to do the same for state legislative maps. These means that the newly re-elected governors of Maryland and Pennsylvania, states notorious for their gerrymandered congressional districts, will have the power to prevent such maps from being approved after this upcoming census. In competitive races, Richard Cordray was elected to be the next Governor of Ohio, preventing Democrats from being able to prevent another gerrymander after the 2020 census. In Wisconsin, the currently undecided gubernatorial election between Republican Scott Walker and Democratic challenger Tony Evers will similarly decide whether or not a gerrymander will occur again in that state.

In an election where most attention was on the federal level, the state-level elections have not only provided mixed results, but may have the longest-lasting effects. Although Democrats lost some close statewide races, they can and should take solace in the success of efforts to depoliticize election administration through electoral and voting-rights reforms in key swing states.

And here lies the greatest irony of our current political system: in order to depoliticize elections and voting, political organization will have to occur at the state level. Normal voters need to organize themselves to either demand that their elected officials enact electoral reforms, or to get such reforms on the ballot themselves. Not only is it our civic duty to improve democracy, even if the results of our democratic elections are unwilling to, but it is entirely possible. Normal individuals were behind the efforts in Colorado, Michigan and Florida, which have now improved democracy in those states for all that live in them. If there’s anything that this election has shown, it is that our republic truly is a democracy; if we can keep it.

Giancarlo Valdetaro is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. Setting the Temperature runs every other Tuesday this semester. He can be reached at gvaldetaro@cornellsun.com

]]>https://cornellsun.com/2018/11/07/valdetaro-a-democracy-if-we-can-keep-it/feed/0Cornell Alumnus Returns to Campus to Share ‘Odyssey’ of Peruvian Research and Rock ‘n’ Rollhttps://cornellsun.com/2018/10/28/cornell-alumnus-returns-to-campus-to-share-odyssey-of-peruvian-research-and-rock-n-roll/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
https://cornellsun.com/2018/10/28/cornell-alumnus-returns-to-campus-to-share-odyssey-of-peruvian-research-and-rock-n-roll/#respondMon, 29 Oct 2018 01:44:35 +0000https://cornellsun.com/?p=4058143Like the epic hero Odysseus, Cornell alumnus Steve Nelson ’62 returned to Ithaca to share his life of adventure, including conducting civil rights research in the Andes, graduating from Harvard Law School, resisting the Vietnam War draft, and managing a monumental rock and blues club, where he booked The Velvet Underground.

“My odyssey began in Ithaca and it took me 10 years to get home, to figure out what that was,” Nelson said. “I had to grapple with what’s home, what does that mean?”

His book, Gettin’ Home: An Odyssey Through the ‘60s, details the many twists and turns he took on his journey, beginning during his time as an undergraduate math major at Cornell and ending after his time managing the club The Boston Tea Party.

Nelson returned to campus for a book signing in The Cornell Store on Friday and to donate a collection of photos and memorabilia from his time spent researching in Peru to the University archives.

“Where I started in June 1961,” Nelson told The Sun, “and where I wind up almost 10 years later – a lot of things changed.”

He was able to conduct his 1961 research through a grant given to him as part of the Cornell-Peru Project, he said. The project was centered in Vicos, an indigenous community in the mountainous region of Peru that relied on a serfdom to produce crops and other products.

According to Nelson, the project was “a pioneering program of land reform, economic and social development and, ultimately, the liberation of the Vicosinos from centuries of feudal servitude.”

Nelson wrote his Cornell-Peru research paper on secondary education in the village after watching one of the brothers in his host family become the first in the village to pursue an education past grade school.

While living in Vicos, Nelson observed the prejudice that indigenous people faced and the outdated feudal system that the members of the community had to work under.

Although working in Vicos exposed him to the hardships that the members of the community had to endure, there were many positive moments throughout his time there. Nelson recounted one of his more memorable experiences when his host father bought him a traditional set of clothing, which he wore to a staff meeting at the Cornell headquarters in Vicos.

“Sometimes in those meetings two or three of the local Vicosinos would wander in and hang around … they would tend to stand against the wall on the side. So I shuffled into the meeting to the side and nobody recognized me until one of the women in our group said ‘Steve!’,” about halfway through the meeting, Nelson said.

“In their eyes, I passed for a Peruvian … being on the other side of that racial and cultural divide, even for a few minutes, was a surprising experience,” he said, and one that would stick with him when he left Peru.

Nelson felt “alienated” upon his return to the states and experienced culture shock moving from one community that was heavily centered around family and cooperation to another that – at the time – had a social life centered around a very competitive greek system.

After graduating Cornell, Nelson attended Harvard Law School. In 1966, following law school, Nelson became a draft resister of the Vietnam War. After a short stint in Washington working for NASA, he found himself back in Boston and “through a series of coincidences,” became familiar with The Velvet Underground, whom he first heard playing at The Boston Tea Party, a popular rock and blues music venue boasting artists from Pink Floyd to Elton John.

Without any background working in clubs or the music industry, Nelson was asked to become the manager of The Boston Tea Party, where he booked rock band The Velvet Underground “probably more times than really anybody else during the time,” he said.

Nelson was inspired to write his book by looking through the photographs of his time in Peru and found a story in them, “somewhat inadvertently.” He wanted to capture what it was like to experience all that he did.

“Just be forewarned, this is a book about a young man coming of age in the 60s,” Nelson said. “There’s sex, drugs and rock and roll.”